Night in the valley was never truly dark anymore.
Since Kael's ascension, the air itself had learned to glow. Threads of pale luminescence drifted above the rivers, clinging to the mist like starlight caught in motion. The villagers called them seed-lights—blessings of their unseen creator.
Lyraen watched them from her window, half-awake, the reflection of her candle flickering against her eyes. Sleep had become a thin thing lately, more like drifting between worlds than resting in one. Every time she closed her eyes, she dreamed of horizons that weren't hers.
In the dream, the sky was upside down.
Stars hung like roots, their light trailing down through oceans of air. Beneath them stretched a continent made of glass, humming with music too low for ears. She stood upon it barefoot, and her reflection beneath the surface didn't match her movements.
"Lyraen," it whispered.
"Can you hear the world learning to breathe?"
She didn't answer. The sound wasn't frightening—only vast, endless, and sad. Each breath of wind carried voices of worlds she had never seen. Flames whispered in one direction, storms in another. And through it all, a rhythm pulsed like a heartbeat too large to belong to anything mortal.
Then came the other sound—distant, aching—like a lullaby sung by something that had never been human.
Kael.
The name rippled through the air, turning the glass beneath her feet to water. The dream folded inward, and she fell through the reflection.
She woke to silence.
Outside, dawn hadn't come yet, but the horizon shimmered faintly violet. The same color she'd glimpsed in the depths of Kael's creation long ago—the shade of unspoken power.
The candle had burned out, yet the room still glowed faintly, a soft light rising from the wooden floorboards in thin lines, tracing patterns like constellations.
Lyraen reached down, and her fingers brushed the glow. It pulsed beneath her touch, warm and alive.
Something inside her chest answered.
Not pain—recognition.
The mark Kael had left upon her years ago—his blessing, his tether—flared for the first time since he vanished beyond the veil. For an instant, her heartbeat matched the slow rhythm of his world's pulse.
She gasped softly and stumbled back, but the light didn't fade. It listened.
Whispers filled the air—not words, but emotions given shape. Fear. Wonder. Hunger. A thousand worlds murmuring at the edge of creation.
And among them, a voice like Kael's—distant, strained, echoing through storms and stars:
Lyraen… if you can hear me, the walls are thinning.
She pressed her palm to her heart, trembling. "Kael?"
No reply—only the sound of something vast shifting in the sky above her home.
The seed-lights outside the window began to rise, one by one, spiraling upward into the clouds. The air hummed, low and resonant, as though the heavens themselves were preparing to wake.
Lyraen stared up through the glass, her breath fogging faintly. Somewhere beyond the horizon, she felt Kael looking back. And between them stretched a silence that was no longer empty—
it was alive.